I’ve pretty much stopped asking most Sandy Hook deniers any serious questions—even ones that might further expose the numerous, glaring flaws in their already shaky claims. Mostly, that’s because the overwhelming majority of them are pathological liars, and I’m not interested in wasting my time with their nonsense. But even more than that, they simply can’t—or won’t—answer them.
“For example, ask someone like Wolfgang Halbig why he continues to use blurry, low-quality copies of Shannon Hicks’ well-known evacuation photos in his near-daily ramblings, and you’ll get a wall of gibberish that doesn’t even acknowledge the original question. Instead, they’ll try to drag you into answering about fifty of their own. This tactic, known as the Gish Gallop, is as exhausting as it is intellectually dishonest. But one question I still ask from time to time—a question no one has dared to answer—is this: if the school closed in 2008, where did its 600+ students go?
That number comes directly from Newtown’s own enrollment report for the 2009-2010 school year, as seen here:
From at least 2008 through 2014, Sandy Hook was the busiest — at least in terms of enrollment — of Newtown’s four public elementary schools. At a time when the school is alleged to have been closing its doors due to declining attendance (which, at least as of this writing, is still the case for all of Newtown’s public elementary schools), it had 117 more students than Middle Gate and 230 more than Hawley. That’s a lot of students to displace. And while some of them obviously moved on to one of the district’s two intermediate schools, Reed and Newtown Middle School both show a drop in enrollment between the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 school years:
Sandy Hook deniers want you to believe that over six hundred students simply vanished into thin air. But what really happened to them?
Many of these same conspiracy theorists have claimed that these students were secretly moved to the former Chalk Hill Middle School in neighboring Monroe. I’ve done extensive research into this claim already, and while it wouldn’t make much sense to rehash everything here (it’s a long entry), I will share Chalk Hill’s historical enrollment information, which can be found in their past strategic school profiles. This data, publicly available and easily verifiable, clearly shows that Chalk Hill was not absorbing hundreds of students from Sandy Hook in 2008—or at any time:
Notice that 2011-2012 is the last available school year for Chalk Hill. This is because the school officially closed its doors on July 1st, 2011. However, if Sandy Hook’s students were somehow moved there in 2008, we should expect to see a significant jump in enrollment in previous years, right? Predictably, since that never happened, there’s no such spike.
The total enrollment at Chalk Hill Middle School, which was comprised solely of 5th and 6th graders, for the 2006-2007 school year was 652:
The very next year—the year in which Sandy Hook was alleged to have closed—enrollment at Chalk Hill was… 679:
That’s a whole twenty-seven more students than the previous year; a far cry from the 600+ that would have been displaced by the sudden closure of Sandy Hook. What about the next year? Perhaps Sandy Hook’s students were moved later in 2008. However, Chalk Hill’s enrollment actually dropped 5.89% for the 2008-2009 school year, down to 639:
This decline further dismantles the idea that an influx of Sandy Hook students found their way to Chalk Hill, as the numbers suggest the opposite was happening. If hundreds of students had truly been transferred, we would expect to see a significant increase in enrollment, not a decrease.
Subsequent years only showed a rapid acceleration of that trend, with enrollment dropping 10.17% in 2009-2010, bringing the total down to 577:
And then a whopping 52% drop (all the way down to 277 total students) for the school’s final year in 2010-2011:
Of course, the most obvious answer is that Sandy Hook always remained open. Further enrollment reports from Newtown’s public schools indicate that 625 students attended the school during the 2009-2010 school year, which is the year after most deniers insist, without evidence, that the school was closed:
Enrollment reports (all from October, though other months are available) from subsequent years continue to show absolutely no gap in operations:
Here’s the report for the 2012-2013 school year, which is when the shooting took place:
As you can see, there were 456 students enrolled in the school at the time. This is especially important because deniers routinely exaggerate this number. For example, on page 25 of his grotesque fiction Nobody Died at Sandy Hook, James Fetzer claims that there were 600 students attending Sandy Hook in 2012. That’s 144 more than the reality! And on page 47 of the same book, he dials that number down to a far more reasonable (yet still incorrect) 469.
The information gleaned from these enrollment reports highlights another substantial flaw in the increasingly nonsensical denier narrative: when Sandy Hook School re-opened a short time after the shooting, where did its 432 students (according to the January 2013 enrollment report found here) come from?
Whether you understand that the school was closed for a very brief period, temporarily relocated to the former Chalk Hill Middle School in Monroe, and then moved again once construction on the new school was completed in 2016, or mistakenly believe it was closed in 2008 and then re-opened at its temporary location in 2013, it is almost universally agreed that Sandy Hook School has been open and operational since January 3rd, 2013. At least, I’ve never encountered anyone who has disputed that. So how was the school re-populated? Were the kids brought in from other area schools? Back in December 2012, there were only 1,151 total students enrolled in the district’s three other elementary schools, so 432 would account for around 38% of Newtown’s K-4 students. Predictably, the enrollment reports do not reflect such a monumental change:
In fact, the biggest net loss in enrollment at any Newtown elementary school between December and January of 2012 (besides Sandy Hook) is a mere one student from Middle Gate. So, just a little ways off.
For more in the “Sandy Hook Elementary Was Open” series, please read:
Part One: The Lobby
Part Two: The Obstinate Pen
Part Three: Holiday Decorations And Calendars
Part Four: SMART Technologies
Part Five: Dawn Hochsprung’s Twitter Feed
Part Six: The 2011-2012 Scrapbook
Part Seven: Children’s Authors Visit Sandy Hook
Part Eight: Charitable Causes
Part Nine: The Library
Part Ten: 92 More Photos From Sandy Hook School
Part Eleven: Over 195 Articles Referencing Sandy Hook School, Written Between 2008-2012
Part Twelve: The Glass Display Cases
Part Thirteen: Google Earth
Part Fourteen: The November 2012 Scholastic Book Fair
Part Fifteen: Sandy Hook School Enrollment For 2008-2017
Part Sixteen: School Documents From 2008-2012
Shill, sorry bro I was a part of a school shooting in PA in 2003 and I saw proper protocol for such a tragic event. The events at Sandy Hook resemble that of a performance. ( Gene Rosen’s rehearsal vid comes to mind) is it common in your fantasy land to order pizza at the scene of a mass shooting of children? The school shooting I witnessed was a chaotic frenzy,, there was a rush of EMTs, air medics, and raw hysteria. I didn’t see anyone calling Dominos.. I did see a body air lifted out, they didn’t wait til the middle of the night to move the body from the school.
Bythe way folks always come off legit when they use a fake name.
Only thing true about you is your name, you disinformation troll.
I can only assume you’re talking about the Red Lion Junior High School shooting, in which, somewhere around fifteen minutes before the day’s classes began, a student shot and killed the principal before turning the gun on himself. That’s the only school shooting that I know of that took place in Pennsylvania back in 2003, so if that’s not it, then you’re going to need to be a bit more uh, forthcoming with your information. But if that is indeed the incident you’re referring to, then surely you have to realize that you’re comparing a murder-suicide, which took the lives of two people (including the perpetrator), to what was up until very recently the 2nd worst mass shooting in American history, taking twenty-eight mostly very young lives. The differences in these two cases are pretty staggering.
As for any part you may have played at Red Lion – and you’ve offered zero proof thus far, so pardon my skepticism – you’re comparing your first-hand experience at a crime scene to what you’ve on TV and YouTube, likely from the safety of your couch or office chair, etc. That’s hardly scientific; of course the two are going to appear vastly different to you, especially if you continue to remain willfully ignorant of what actually happened at Sandy Hook in favor of some goofy conspiracy theories you saw online. So are not blessed with any sort of special insight here.
Think about this: following your own twisted logic, anyone involved with Sandy Hook – and there are hundreds of them – could just as easily question what happened at Red Lion. I mean they wouldn’t, besides they’re not monsters, but still. I know that when I Google it, I don’t see anyone being air lifted, or a rush of EMTs, etc, so I could also make the claim that I don’t see “proper protocol” being followed, and therefore cast doubt on the entire event.
Again, I can only assume here, and I would have to assume you’re talking about Gene’s video interview with Matt Coyne of The Hour, which is where it was originally published before it was stripped of all context and uploaded all over YouTube. What proof do you have that this video was a “rehearsal”, and why do you think that they would not only film a “rehearsal” video on the day of the shooting, as helicopters hover ahead, but publish said “rehearsal” on their mainstream news site under the guise of an interview? Why would they even need a recorded “rehearsal”? Have you ever asked yourself this stuff?
Yes, in my crazy “fantasy land”, human beings require sustenance, regardless of the circumstances, and therefore need to eat at least semi-regularly. So people brought pizzas and water to the firehouse – which was not the scene of a mass shooting, by the way – for the many families waiting there, some of which stayed for hours on end. Jesse Lewis’ father, for instance, showed up shortly after the shooting and stayed there until about 1:30 in the morning. Even those who were lucky enough to be reunited with their children had to wait there for some time. Are they not supposed to eat? This is such an odd thing to focus on. Do you think the fact that the families of those missing in the MH370 crash ate while they waited in a hotel for confirmation from Malaysia Airlines means that they’re also faking it? What about those that camped outside of a collapsed building in Mexico after a 7.1 magnitute earthquake in September, waiting for news of their loved ones? I can provide more examples, if necessary, because I’d really love to know where the line is.
And Sandy Hook was not a “chaotic frenzy” based on what? The witness statements included in the final report certainly seem to paint it that way. At least that’s how Paramedic Bernie Meehan referred to it in his police interview. Same goes Trooper Slaiby, who described a “chaotic scene”. And they were actually there. So what evidence do you have to the contrary?
Again, what is this based on? What evidence do you have to support your claim that no “raw hysteria”? How do you even define it? And if you’re referring to the fact that EMTs were initially kept from entering the building, surely you understand that this is because the school was still considered a “hot zone” at that time, as police didn’t believe the school was safe for them to enter. If you want to talk about “proper protocol”, that’s proper protocol. The same thing happened at Columbine, which I know that at least Wolfgang Halbig believes to be a legitimate shooting. There, emergency crews waited outside of the school for nearly an hour while a teacher lay dying. Aurora and Pulse are two more examples, but let me guess: those weren’t real either, right?
In regards to the Red Lion shooting, the principal was first rushed to the hospital, which is where he was declared dead. Most of Adam Lanza’s victims were pronounced dead at the scene as they had received injuries “not compatible with life”. This is well-documented, so I’m not sure why it’s still an issue. The few that were injured – or those clinging to life – were then rushed to nearby Danbury Hospital, which is less than twelve miles away. Ambulences were already on the scene, so that’s how they were transported. Helicopters are not always used in active shooter scenarios. Again, two very different situations here, so it doesn’t make a lick of sense to compare them apples-to-apples. As for waiting until “the middle of the night” to move the bodies, again, this is proper protocol: the victims needed to be assigned an arbitrary number, then an OCME case number, and then fully documented (that includes complete written and photographic documentation) before they could be moved to the portable tent. With twenty-seven bodies in the school, all of which need to be processed in this manner, this obviously took some time. This is how it works. This is the proper protocol.
The people who don’t believe I’m legitimate would do so regardless; my name has nothing to do with it. But in using an alias, I’m able to shield myself from the stalking, and harassment that deniers routinely participate in.
Aw man, I thought we were bros! And now you’re using the satirical name that I chose for myself against me? Ouch!
Lol Shill. You were proven wrong in court you fccking nazi.
Can I first take a minute to talk about how hilarious it is that you chuckleheads can’t decide if I’m a “jew” or a “nazi”? All for researching a mass shooting. It’s really something.
Anyway, I’ll bite: which court case and what, exactly, was I proven wrong about? I can only assume this is in reference to Lenny Pozner’s civil case against Wolfgang Halbig, but I would of course love to know how that proves me wrong about anything.